


what exciting things will happen today

by thermocline



Category: Disney's Paperman (Video Short), Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Meet-Cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 20:14:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9140563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thermocline/pseuds/thermocline
Summary: On a day in this city, things are gray.A man walks down the street, on his way to catch the train, soft hums of electricity on rail as the car approaches and comes to a stop. The doors slide open. He jostles his way inside, a duffle bag slung over one shoulder, skates slung over the other.The first thing he notices is a boy opposite him in the car, staring curiously.(Or: a Paperman AU.)





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hockeycaptains](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hockeycaptains/gifts).



> Hi there Nicole!
> 
> This is a treat fic for you - I know you're really into Jo/Nate, and I adored your fic for them. I was watching short films over break when I rewatched ["Paperman"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIgs8EyQTdk) and realized just how PERFECT it is for this pairing. This happened. Tossed together one night while babysitting. I hope you enjoy!
> 
> Title is from "Avant Gardener" by Courtney Barnett, which is a super cute song, but this is also best read while listening to the soundtrack for the film!

On a day in this city, things are gray.

 

A man walks down the street, on his way to catch the train, soft hums of electricity on rail as the car approaches and comes to a stop. The doors slide open. He jostles his way inside, a duffle bag slung over one shoulder, skates slung over the other.

 

The first thing he notices is a boy opposite him in the car, staring curiously.

 

The boy is tall, lean, with a perfect curl of hair on his head. His suit is gray, charcoal, almost black. It suits him, brings out the trim line of his shoulders and the twinkle in his eyes. He studies the larger, broader one, judging him quietly, and gives him a small smile to test the waters.

 

The boy with the broad chest smiles back. He feels warm, excited, like they could be something special. Then, regrettably, the announcer calls the stop for the museum. 

 

The boy with the curly hair nearly misses his exit. He stumbles away in his beautiful suit, with a tie that is so - blue. Perfect cobalt in a sea of gray.

 

The tie flutters behind him as he runs out and up the steps of the museum, a small backpack on his back.

 

He watches, begrudgingly, as the train begins moving again, and Tie Boy escapes his line of sight.

 

The train lurches along, windows fogged with condensation, and the boy draws the curl of Tie Boy's hair on one of the glass panes. His stop is coming up, he knows that, but - 

 

He stares down at his bag, at the scrawled Nathan on the please return to label, and he sighs. 

 

The man - Nate's - eyes flicker over to the ground next to where he goes to retrieve his skates, and, there, right under his skate guards, is a paper, a map to the Met, filled with sketches in beautiful blue pen.

 

They call the stop for his office building, and he picks it up hurriedly on the way out.

 

Nate turns it over and over in his hands as the elevator numbers rise one, two, three floors up. He's waiting for seven. He can wait a while.

 

Tie Boy must have dropped it. The color is the same, and he must've been in a hurry for an important occasion, perhaps a familial obligation, a date, a council on how to survive a post-abstract apocalypse or a conference on fascist causation of the surrealist movement, or - 

 

Or a date.

 

Nate folds the paper into quarters and resolves not to look at it again. He won't see Tie Boy anytime soon, anyway.

 

+

 

Imagine, just for a moment, that something so curious were to happen, that you might disbelieve it at first.

 

Imagine the skyline gray, the sky concrete, the pavement slick with rain too weary to hold itself in the sky.

 

Close your eyes, dear reader, and think, what would be the odds that something you experienced today circles back to you, affecting you in a way you deemed impossible?

 

Now imagine, for a moment more, that you looked out your window, and saw the object of a connection you thought to be lost to the wind.

 

Such was it for Nate this afternoon.

 

+

 

The seventh floor is an awfully long way up, but the bright blue of that tie is awfully hard to miss, after all. There's only about three floors and a fairly narrow street between them.

Nate almost hits his head opening the window so quickly. Tie Boy is shaking hands with someone behind a desk, presumably a museum official, and then he's smoothing his lapels, and then he's sitting down, and, and, and - 

 

Now, how to catch his attention?

 

Everyone else in the office clicks away at keyboards and scrawls to notarize forms. Coffee mugs clink. There's an occasional sigh from a frustrated case manager or the abrupt, bristling ring of a telephone.

 

The looming pile of empty forms in the in basket on Nate's desk seems to beckon him.

 

He pulls one off the top of the stack, fashioning it with careful folds into a simple paper airplane.

 

If he can just aim it right - a little to the left, maybe - he could get it through the window and land it on the desk, catch Tie Boy’s attention.

 

Ready. Aim. Toss.

 

A gust of wind carries it just wise of the window, two rooms down where it bumps against another office window. Nate frantically pantomimes an apology and resolves to try again. 

 

The second toss is better, a little closer, but just low of the windowsill. The third hits a very peeved bird, who squawks and pushes the airplane off the ledge to the ground. The fourth hits the top half of the window, but not the open half, and then falls into the street.

 

The fifth hits the edge. The sixth is off entirely. The seventh is carried by wind. And the eighth, ninth, tenth, seemingly hundredth don't make it either. Nate's almost out of forms to fold into airplanes.   
  
His boss glowers at him disapprovingly. Nate’s face burns. He feigns being engrossed in filling out an insurance form. A few seconds pass.

 

After a deep breath, Nate peers into the window across the street again, and oh, no. Tie Boy is getting up, shaking the hand of the interviewer, presumably, and he’s only got about thirty seconds before the small talk ends and he loses his chance, and Nate can’t run out of work to chase him, but he can’t get up to get any more papers either, but - 

 

There’s one paper left. Covered in little sketches. Nate studies it for a second. In the corner, someone has scrawled in cursive handwriting, in black pen,  _ Jo - this is your copy! See you Thursday! _

 

Tie Boy’s name is Jo.

 

Jo is a nice name, Nate thinks to himself. He could see himself loving Jo. Keeping Jo forever, if he wanted that, but not unless - 

 

Nate breathes in deep and folds the paper. He aims. Aims again. Squints, tries his hardest.

 

A gust of wind abruptly rips the last airplane out of his hand. It floats, tauntingly, down to the street, just shy of getting run over by the city bus. Nate looks back up, and Tie Boy -  _ Jo -  _ slips out through the door.

 

+

 

Deep, deep disappointment curls in his chest, sinking like a stone.

 

Imagine a sky, grayer than when you first looked at it, fresh off the morning fog.

 

It’s like having weights attached to your limbs, analogous to playing pick-up hockey after a twelve-hour day of sitting down - stretched too far, completely, utterly gutted.

 

“Jo,” Nate murmurs to himself, mournfully.

 

His boss clears his throat and drops a stack of new forms on Nate’s desk, ominous and unappealing. Tyson shoots him a sorrowful glance across the room.

 

_ No,  _ he thinks. Helplessness is compounded through others’ pity.

 

_ Leaving early today _ , Nate scrawls on a post-it, and sticks it to his boss’s door.

 

Two hours, and he’ll call it quits for the day, bite the extra work he’ll have to take home.

 

+

 

When the clock hits three-thirty, Nate gathers his things and bolts out of the room. He skips the elevator, no patience for it today, and takes the stairs two at a time down to the first floor.

 

As soon as he pushes open the lobby doors, looks around to see only dreary gray in his periphery, the disappointment doubles down and punches him in the chest once more. The last airplane is poised mockingly on the mailbox next to the building’s entrance. 

 

Without thinking, he picks it up and throws it to god knows where, up, up, and over the passing cars.

 

He seems to drag his feet on the way back to the station, taking the long way to the next stop, passing by the alley next to the museum. It’s always empty, scraps of blunts and fast food wrappers littering the corners. But something catches his eye. 

 

It's the airplane with the blue sketches on it, and with it - dozens of others, in varying states of distress, all the forms that he folded are here. 

 

The papers rustle as the breeze passes by. The one with Jo's name seems to dance in the wind. It rises, swirling around Nate's knees, poking at his hip gently, as if to say hey, go that way - towards the museum or the station, Nate has no idea.

 

One by one, the others join it.

 

It's a bit like Nate is magnetic. The paper airplanes cover his back, pushing him forward hurriedly. Some push at his shoulder, some get behind his knees, almost like he's a puppet at their mercy. Well, Nate realizes as they start pushing him, despite digging his heels into the sidewalk and trying to stay in one place. Soon he's running, limbs flailing, the planes seeming to laugh at his lack of coordination. He bumps into a girl walking her dog and before he can apologize, the planes are whisking him away. After almost toppling a newsstand and smashing into the side of a parked SUV, he's breathless, and his steps finally slow down. But they don't stop quite yet. 

 

Down the station platform, where Nate's been lead, now currently pinned to the bench and waiting for the train to the rink sulkily, a figure appears.

 

It's tall, and lean; sharply dressed in dark grey except for the cobalt blue tie.

 

It's following a paper airplane, as if the plane got blown away into the wind and demanded that the figure follow.

 

It's - Jo.

 

Jo looks up and glances around, pacing a few steps closer until the plane hovering in midair comes to rest, right over the palm of his hand. The planes pinning Nate to the bench fall away all at once in a loud _whoosh_ , scattering on the bench and around his feet. Jo startles and looks up, eyes wide and confused until he sees Nate and realizes.

 

"You're - " Jo starts. He looks at Nate appraisingly, amused, befuddled. His eyes come to rest on the duffel bag, propped outwards on Nate's lap, with his name scrawled across the label. "Nate," Jo reads, pleased with himself, unflinchingly sure in his tone. He smiles, and Nate fights the urge to sigh.

 

Nate blushes. The blue sketched-on map, folded into a plane, still rests in his hand. He gingerly unfolds it, hands shaking. Jo watches him keenly.

 

The form flutters slightly when Nate holds it out. "You're Jo?"

 

He means for it to sound more assertive than it is.

 

Jo nods, disbelieving, and his grin is so wide it could fill Nate to bursting.

 

"Jo," Nate says, more sure this time. He wants to say so much like hey, I think you're beautiful. I'm sorry I made your day harder with all of this magic that somehow decided we needed a push in the right direction, but in my defense, you looked at me just a little too long, this morning, like you wanted to talk to me but you were too shy. I was, too.

 

He doesn't say any of that. Instead, he settles on, "I like your tie."

 

"Thank you," Jo says bashfully. He carefully sweeps some of the paper airplanes on the bench off onto the platform and sits next to Nate. "Do you want to go to dinner sometime?"

 

Nate is so surprised that he squeaks a little, clutching his bag to his chest. Jo laughs, full and bright.

 

"Yes," he says, nodding quickly. "Yes, I would love that."

 

+

 

Two days later, after dinner, excellent conversation, and a leisurely skate around the rink where Nate plays pick-up, it feels like they've known each other for years.

 

Jo tags along to the office's New Years' party. A few hours in, he pulls Nate onto the barstool next to him and links their hands. Nate smiles. Jo kisses him, soft and sweet, and things don't seem quite so gray. His coworkers are either preoccupied or totally unaware, which Nate is grateful for. He doesn't exactly want to explain the odd circumstances that brought them together. 

 

Paper airplanes or not, well.

 

Jo wears the same blue tie tonight, his breathing soft where he's pressed against Nate's chest. Their arms are entwined around each others' waists in a familiar embrace.

 

Nate runs the tie through his fingers and sighs, content.

 

"What?" Jo says, pulling back slightly.

 

"I'm just really glad we found each other. It feels like we would've met somehow or another anyways."

 

"Hey," Jo says, softer. "Me too."

 

Nate slides the tab across the bar, the excess space on the check rife with doodles in blue pen, and Nate's additions in green.  

 

"To new beginnings," Jo says, clinking his nearly-empty glass against Nate's. 

 

To new beginnings, and the odd handiwork of fate's interference, the ways in which we are pulled together and our stories are told again and again, never any less unbelievable, never any less tender.

 

Nate can toast to that.


End file.
